Design Post Update

Whatever the key aim you decided on in the previous step now is time to plan out how best to achieve it. This might be through make a certain element pop up, be larger than others, be strategically positioned or colored, be animated, be framed etc. It could even be through multiple methods. Whatever you decide, create a sketched layout to display where you intend to place the different elements of the website.

There are even web design theories on how best to achieve this. The F Layout and the Z Layout  and the Gutenberg Diagram are the 3 most common.

3. Select An Appropriate Style 

Once decided upon a strategic layout for your website and armed with a sketched layout to work from you will next need to decide on an appropriate style for the website. By style I am referring to the colors, fonts and imagery that will be used in the website. It is very important to select a style appropriate for the website and not one based on your favorite colors or fonts as these may not match well with the website's purpose.

Images...

There are now millions of free images available to web designers

4. Gather and Create Website Content

A website is made up of a wide range of content types like text, images, videos and udio

This one is pretty self explanatory. Once you have decided on the style of the website design you want the next step is to get organised by finding or creating all the content you need. When I say content I am referring to text, images, video, audio, custom fonts, files for download etc.

As well as gathering and/or creating the content you will also need to Optimise the content in terms of file names and file types. The file type of audio and video in particular can effect is they will load on a particular browser and also how quickly they do load. Read more on that here. In general MP4 for video and MP3 for audio are your best options.

"An image tells a thousand words" or so they saying goes, however they are also big files which can be slow to load and therefore damage your websites' load speed and user friendliness. Softwares such as Photoshop have specific tools to optimise the size and file type of the image for you. Free Photoshop alternatives like Gimp and online editors such as Pixlr are also great options.

Depending on the method you choose for the actual creation of the website you may need to store content in order to link it from your website. For images Flickr or Picasa are best, YouTube or Vimeo for videos and Google Drive, One Drive or Drop Box for files.

5. Learn HTML and CSS (the basics at least)

HTML and CSS are the building blocks of all websites

Whatever method you choose to create a website through you will still need to know the basics of HTML and CSS in order to make the most of your website (No matter what you have been told!).

Even WYSIWYG website builders like Wix and Weebly (more on those in a moment) use HTML and CSS in the background and if you want to tweak the design or add custom widgets you will need to know basic HTML and CSS.

We have a nice and simple 10 step guide to learning HTML and another for CSS. You can also visit the W3Schools website for information on specific aspects of HTML or CSS.

6. Create the website (5 methods to choose from)

There are 5 main ways to create a website

So now that you have the basics of HTML and CSS it is time to create the actual website. It may seem silly to say this but if you have flicked through the article straight to this section I really recommend going back to the beginning! So many people jump straight in at this stage and waste a lot of their time because they have not completed the previous steps. Don't say you weren't warned.

With that little rant over, lets look at your options for creating the website.

Programmed from scratch: 

If you have good HTML and CSS skills or perhaps you are really enjoying the W3schools tutorials I recommended earlier then this is an option for you. It is also the most cost effective option but also the most time consuming. Komodo Edit is an excellent free code editor which you can use to make programming your own website a little easier.

Start with a template:

If you want to program the website yourself but need a little bit of a helping hand getting started then perhaps a website template is the way to go, just be sure to get a responsive template to ensure your website is as user friendly as possible. You can choose from an amazing 100 free responsive website templates here. A template is a great idea, especially for new web designers, just be sure to customise it!

Website builders:

Website builders advertise themselves as the easiest and quickest method to create a website. Companies like SquareSpace, Wix and Weebly are the best options for this approach and they both offer a starter package where you can get online with a free sub-domain name and free hosting. However, in my opinion, this is not a good option.

Website builders always seem to result in very rigid web designs, the free domain name is not a full domain and they tend to overcharge you for a full domain name. You often need to upgrade to a paid account to go to a custom domain too and the monthly or yearly pricing structure is usually quite expensive. Bandwidth restriction, custom ads and storage space are other things that often need to be paid to unlock. In summary, this wouldn't be a choice I'd recommend.

Content Management Systems: (Recommended Option)

CMS for short, content management systems are similar to, and often confused with, website builders. The difference being a CMS website design and structure is often created by a web designer first before being handed over to a client who only has access to a front end to make basic updates.

However, especially if you have learned some HTML and CSS, you can take charge and create the website design and structure yourself using systems like Blogger and Wordpress. Which one is better is constantly being debated online with my personal preference being Blogger (read why). Whichever you choose this is a great option which offers you templates to get started, widgets to drag and drop in while still having access to the HTML and CSS to make advanced or specific changes and tweaks.

Hire a web designer:

If you don't have the time to learn how to build a website, need to have complex functions or a very specific look... and you have a budget, then you will want to outsource the work.

Be careful who you hire, though. A poorly developed website can cost you money, drive away customers, and hurt your reputation. Following a few basic steps will increase your odds of hiring a creative, technically savvy, and cost-effective design firm or freelancer.

We can proudly recommend Opus Web Designs as an excellent option.

7. Purchase a Domain Name (and hosting)

Select your domain name carefully

Depending on the method you chose to create the website you may also need hosting space for the website but all methods require teh purchase of a domain name. There a far too many domain name sellers to list and too many good ones to compare so what I generally advise is buy local.

Choose a company from your own country as if anything goes wrong you only need to make a local call instead of a national one and smaller companies can often deal with any issues you have more efficiently.

If you can afford it, I would also recommend purchasing a national and an international domain name extension to maximise the impact your website has in search engines in your own country.

8. Launch the website

9. Perform SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is key to having a successful website

It may seem silly to be performing Search Engine Optimisation after you launch your website but realistically you need to anlayze your websites' online performance through Google's Search Console (webmaster tools) and Google Analytics before making any tweaks to your websites content.

SEO is a tedious task and requires attention to detail, a selecetive use of language and the optimistaion of all web content. You can read our top 10 SEO tips to help make it a little easier.

10. Market the website

"Build it and they will come" does not apply to websites! They must be marketed

Once SEO has been performed you should see an increase in traffic to your website but you will also need to market and promote the website through other methods to maintain and more importantly increase traffic.

The use of social media platforms is the most cost effective method of advertising your website to a large audience but don't try to use every single social media method as you simply won't have the time and an out of date or inactive account will only put people off. You will be better off choosing 3 or 4 methods and being as active as possible on those platforms to build your audience and keep them engaged. I would recommend Facebook, Twitter and then 1 or 2 others.

If you are regularly creating new content for your website, through a blog for example, then sending email newsletters is also a good way to remind people about your website and encourage them to return to access the new content. Mailchimp is definitely the market leader in this area.

Finally, you can always try to get other people to do it for you! By using share buttons or similar on your website you will encourage visitors to share your content with their contacts. It's a great method if it works but relies on you providing quality content otherwise it will not be shared. Addthis is an excellent option to easily integrate social sharing into your website.

Easy Custom Domain Integration

You cannot purchase a domain name directly through Blogger but you can connect your Blogger website with any domain name in a few simple steps, Blogger are even kind enough to provide you with instructions. The old .blogspot address will also redirect to the new domain with the content from your blogger website being displayed under your chosen domain without a visitor being any the wiser. Search engines will use the custom domain name to index the site, meaning it appears as a fully fledged professional website and not a run of the mill blog.

Although domain names are generally quite cheap, as low as $5 for an annual .com license, hosting on the other hand is not as cheap. I have seen hosting costs range anywhere from $50 to $500 a year depending on the amount of space, level of security and other features that a client can require. Blogger, as already mentioned, has no hosting costs. Where's the catch you ask? 

Free Unlimited Hosting

Well, one that used to stop me from using Blogger was that it does not support PHP. But nowadays for contact forms and other standard PHP things there are ways around it such as using JotForm to create and host your form, then embedding it into your Blogger site. Another big one that used to be a problem was that there used to be a limit of 20 static pages per site, but that has since been removed, so there is now unlimited space available which most paid hosting services can't offer. How is this possible you ask, well that brings us nicely to the next point.

It is Run By Google

Blogger is part of the Google family so you are guaranteed a quality and reliable service. But returning to the previous point about storage what a Blogger account also gives you is a Google account and with that comes lots of other free stuff. You see when you set up your blog you will need to create an account, which is actually a Google account (unless you already had one of course) and therefore you simultaneously set up a YouTube account, a Google Drive account, a Google + account, a Gmail account, a Google Calendar account, a Google Places account and much more besides. All of these tools can be used to expand the possibilities for your Blogger website like storing documents (Google Drive), hosting videos (YouTube), arranging or displaying events (Google Calendar) or literally putting your business on the map (Google Maps).

Easy SEO

(SEO is Search Engine Optimisation ) Within Blogger you can also label your blog posts with keywords and submit a specific description to be used by search engines while indexing your website. As a Google product it is also very well coded and hosted on a Google owned server so speed performance is usually very good. As mentioned above a Blogger account comes hand in hand with a Google account and 2 more SEO related tools called Google Webmaster and Google Analytics. Google webmaster allows you to index your Blogger website in the Google search listings and then control various aspects of that listing such as geographic targeting, robots.txt and sitemap.xml settings all the while receiving basic data about your websites performance. Google analytics takes performance data to the next level and allows you to monitor every conceivable detail about your websites performance.

Easy To Learn & Use

Loads Of Gadgets

There are a wide selection of gadgets within Blogger that can be added to the default header, body, footer sections. Things like site search, follow by e-mail and Ad-sense can simply be selected, edited to suit your needs and then dragged and dropped into the site layout as you see fit. As well as these relatively standard gadgets there is one gadget simply called the HTML/JavaScript Gadget. If you are a web designer or coder and feel restricted by all the templates and standard gadgets this simply allows you to code anything at all to appear in your website. I use it mainly for slideshows and custom menus. Currently there are around 1,000 widgets/gadgets to choose from so there is plenty of choice.

More Than Just Templates

The 'customise' section within Blogger allows you to customise all the default elements of your website, on desktop or mobile, using a WYSIWYG system so even without any coding knowledge you can still personalise your website to the way you want it. As I touched on in the previous point if you don't like templates and standard web gadgets you can still edit the site H.T.M.L. and C.S.S. code of your Blogger website directly to create a unique and original design or just to tweak an existing template or gadget. Within the HTML code there are even 'conditional' sections such as (without the HTML to avoid confusion), if displaying on a mobile device then do x, y and z. This makes it really easy to customise the look of the mobile site option, which I just realised I forgot to mention as another great built in feature of Blogger websites!

Can Be Used As A CMS

This point is really only relevant for web designers/developers. For me and any web designer who already knows how to code a website from scratch anyway one would think that Blogger did not hold much appeal, however the fact is that a Blogger website is easy for a client to update the pages after you have designed them and therefore lends itself very well to being used as a Content Management System. A client simply needs to log into a Google account connected, through the blog's settings, to the website and on each page of the website they will then see little wrench icons at the bottom of each section. They can then click on the icon and use the pop up editor to make the changes they need. The editor is very similar to editing a word document as well as allowing the insertion of videos, images and links with relative ease. So if the client has basic computer skills then they should be fine. It can;t get much simpler than that! And if a client is a little more tech savvy then they can just used the Blogger system directly to edit the website in the same way that you set it up. 

*If you skimmed through and noticed only 9 headings you'll have to read through to discover the hidden 10th reason included in one of the sections - I say hidden but I only remember it as I was writing the article ;)